In reaction to "Where did all the PHP programmers go?"

Leonid Mamchenkov is ranting about the difficulties of hiring a good PHP dev. I find the question quite valid...

http://mamchenkov.net/wordpress/2008/06/04/where-did-all-the-php-programmers-go/

I've been hiring PHP devs for the last few years, and I too have a test that I find desesperatly easy, and that too many (even senior) applicant fail miserably... It's based on http://www.techinterviews.com/, with questions going from sorting an array (I only ask the applicant what he should use) to the differences between GET and POST (very highlighting question).

I've even been challenged by my collegues, who thought the test was too hard, so I just ran it over a few people I would hire if they'd been available, and of course, they found the test to be just fine...

I still believe PHP is a great language, and we produce software that is really cool with it, with low effort. It is a pleasure to write code in PHP, and the low training curve is a good thing.
Now I've decided I'd rather hire a good professional and train him (as long as he's aware of the particularities of web applications - jumping from java to php is easier than from C++ to PHP - the syntax is one thing, the understanding of stateless software is another). All in all I agree it's very hard to find a good php developper, and I believe they all go to .Net, which I hope they like....